Fascinating Fens loves bringing people together and promoting and exploring all things about the fens through heritage, nature, creativity, wellbeing and accessibility. But Covid-19 has made everything harder this year, so many of our new activities have turned virtual. December is a perfect time to reflect on some of these projects.
Giant Lockdown Eel
In May, we started the ‘giant lockdown eel’. Communities could get involved and colour or decorate a section of an eel drawing. Next spring we’re hoping to hold an event to bring all of the sections together to make the giant eel. If you still want to get involved, the colouring sheets are on the website.
Celebrate the Fens
In June, we organised the first ever Celebrate the Fens day. We had originally planned to include guided walks, tours, events, craft activities and open days. We didn’t want to let Covid get in the way, so we converted our programme to a virtual one. A huge thank you to everyone who took part. Our website featured ideas for walks, blogs, quizzes, craft sessions, videos and photos by various people and organisations in the fens. As a result, some schools used these resources to help with teaching their children about the fens. We’re already planning next year’s Celebrate the Fens event, which will take place on the weekend of 19 June 2021. So get in touch if you have an event in mind.
Fen Calendar
In July, another community project created a unique 2021 Fen Calendar. We created the calendar from a photo competition launched by Fascinating Fens and it features images from all over the fens. There were over 60 images submitted, and the beautiful photos included a variety of locations and scenes. It was so hard to choose the ones to feature and I would like to thank everyone for sending an entry. The calendars, along with other fen gifts, are available to buy online. Visit www.fascinatingfens.com/shop.
Fen Folks Fridays
In September, we started a pilot of free Zoom ‘Fen Folks Fridays’ talks. Speakers so far have included James Boyce (writer of Imperial Mud), Rachael Brown from Fen Biosphere, Paul Burrows talking about flood management, Roy Pallett from the Soham Pumpkin Fair, and Ivor Rowlands from the Kings Lynn Shakespeare Guildhall. We held our final pilot event on 4 December, during which Lyn Gibb de Swarte talked about fen skating and bandy.
If you would like to take part in Fen Folks Friday or Celebrate the Fens day, or would like further information about our projects, please contact fascinatingfens@hotmail.com or check out our website www.fascinatingfens.com. And if you are into social media, find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Going forward, The Local View has kindly asked Fascinating Fens to write a regular post for the online magazine. We thank them for this great opportunity to promote all things fascinating and fantastic about the Fens.
WORDS Karen Merrison
Read another article about The Fens here
